Click to play videoLos Angeles: The UK authorities may have downgraded their threat perception, but the security alert for passengers still continues.
The fear is that if the luggage and cargo in the bottom of the plane are safe.
Travelers adjusted quickly to new security rules by checking more baggage, avoiding the hassle of new carry-on rules.
But the questions arise what if terrorists think in the same way and use the luggage and cargo in the bottom of the plane?
"We don't know what's underneath the floor of that airplane, in terms of what cargo, and what baggage. Anything could be put in that now. And the fact of the matter is, that stuff could be set off in flight from the cabin," says Airline Consultant Mike Boyd.
The 9/11 Commission voiced and continues to voice similar concerns but there's no nationwide system in place to detect all explosives in checked baggage.
"There is technology available now that can detect explosives in baggage. It has not been deployed at most airports. That has to happen," says 9/11 Commission Vice Chairman Thomas Kean.
Now, this challenge is particularly acute in Los Angeles, where the entire airport baggage system is already scheduled to be replaced, and yet the amount of traffic handled by that system spiked by 30 to 50 per cent immediately after the terror threat.
It’s an open secret that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lacks the technology to screen all cargo for explosives.
"Right now there's no technology in place to be able to screen some of our larger pieces of cargo, so we have been working with industry to develop technologies so we can meet that," says TSA Spokesman, 9/11 Commission Nico Melendez.
But the immediate focus of the authority is on liquid explosives - a challenge because they can be made from common chemicals.
"The difficulty is, what do we do with explosives made out of very common chemicals, chemicals that almost everybody has with them in their dry cleaning or their cosmetics. Because we don't want a system that has so many false positives that we have hours and hours waiting on line at the airport because we have to open every bottle and every cosmetics case," said Secretary of Homeland Security, 9/11 Commission Michael Chertoff.
The administration says it is moving quickly to develop new explosive detection systems.
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